Best ‘New to Us’ Books in 2012: Lynn W.’s Picks

Today’s blog talks about five audio books I’ve enjoyed during 2012. I listen to fiction and memoirs, and if read by the author, all the better. Each year, I stumble onto a children’s book title and find juvenile fiction altogether as engaging as adult fiction, so one is included here. — Lynn W.

This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection by Carol Burnett
Carol presents a series of short vignettes from her private and performing life. Some feature her grandmother, Nanny, a real character, who loved show business and the contacts she made through Carol and capitalized on them. There are funny stories, like how her adoration of Jimmy Stewart panned out the first time they met on a set when she got her foot stuck in a pail of whitewash and walked out with it still attached, too tongue-tied to say a word. The author reads this collection, adding to the emotional depth and also the comic moments.

The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels – a Love Story by Ree Drummond
If ever there was a mismatch, it was Ree and Marlboro Man. Ree, a native Oklahoman, went to southern California for college and never looked back towards Tulsa except for holidays. Now in her mid-twenties, home is a pit stop on her way to the big time in Chicago. While there she hits a bar with friends and meets Marlboro Man, a tall, strong, real-life cowboy. Their story, read by the author in her authentic and charming Oklahoma voice, is a true love story. We never learn Marlboro Man’s name, but we sure feel the heat develop between them.

The Forgotten Affairs of Youth by Alexander McCall Smith
This eighth Isabel Dalhousie mystery set in Edinburgh, Scotland pleases the ear with soft Scottish accents and descriptions of the gray city and green countryside. Isabel Dalhousie, a philosopher, is approached by a visiting Australian philosopher seeking her biological father’s identity. This is the “mystery.” Isabel and her fiancé Jamie are planning their wedding, all the while watching their beautiful son grow from day to day. This series is a leisurely walk through Scotland’s capital, meeting along the way fascinating people and places and everyday concerns.

The Night Train by Clyde Edgerton
Two teenage boys in 1960s small town North Carolina form a friendship over their love of jazz, a relationship not exactly accepted in this segregated community. Dwayne absolutely loves James Brown’s Live at the Apollo album, while Larry Lime is a pianist wanting to learn Thelonious Monk’s style from a jazz musician called the Bleeder. Their story and shenanigans will entertain while showing music is truly one of the ways humans unite and move beyond their differences. This audio is well-read, giving voice to accents and origins with accuracy.

Everything on a Waffle by Polly Horvath
If your parents disappeared one stormy night and your fishing village neighbors were forced to take you in, how would you feel? Especially if almost everyone is sure your parents were drowned at sea and you are absolutely certain they are merely delayed returning? Primrose Squarp tells her own story; her twelve-year-old point of view of friends (does she have any left?) and neighbors (including Miss Perfidy, who is paid by the town to care for Primrose) is fresh and rings true. Over the months, Primrose rediscovers her uncle, goes into foster care, and begins work on a cookbook while she awaits her parents’ return. This is a delightful mood lifter.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

People have been recommending this book to me for the last three years and I have been completely resistant to its charms, mostly because of how it has been described to me – something along the lines of “it’s about a hostage situation, but also about opera.” Bo-ring. Or so I thought.

After having any book recommended to me often enough, I’ll eventually try it, which is how I wound up with a copy of Bel Canto on my nightstand, waiting to be read. The story is loosely based on the Japanese embassy hostage crisis that occurred in Lima, Peru in 1996 when the terrorist group the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement took hundreds of government officials hostage, some for as long as 126 days. In Patchett’s fictionalized retelling, a Japanese businessman, Mr. Hosokawa, visits an undisclosed location in South America for a party honoring his birthday. Although invited in the hopes that he would bring business to the area, Hosokawa’s sole reason for attending is the evening’s entertainment – opera singer Roxane Coss. An avid opera-goer, Hosokawa is enchanted by her voice and jumps at the chance for a semi-private performance.

As Roxane and her accompanist finish their recital, armed terrorists descend upon the party in an attempt to make demands of the President, who was presumed to be in attendance (though was in fact at home, watching his soap opera.) What follows is the story of a group of disparate people from different cultures, speaking different languages, and how they help each other survive, hostages and terrorists alike. Some people might say that music becomes the common language for the characters in this book, but I don’t really think that’s true – it gives people something to do with their days, and something to occupy their minds, but the common language is perhaps time; how much of it they have left, and how to best spend what they do have.

The narrative weaves together different characters’ stories and shows how they build a life together over the several months that the hostage situation lasts. The book ends in much the same way that the Japanese Embassy hostage crisis did (so, sorry if I just ruined it for you) and a brief epilogue gives the reader a glimpse into what life after the event looks like for two couples.

This was my first Ann Patchett novel, and I’ll definitely come back for more.

For another perspective on this book, take a look at Brandy H.’s review of it on our blog two years ago.

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The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood

This book had me at “Part Secret History, part Brideshead Revisited.” The Secret History by Donna Tartt is hands down one of my favorite books – it has the perfect blend of academia, creepy siblings, and the elite. With that kind of review, I immediately snagged an e-galley of Bellwether Revivals, but didn’t get a chance to actually read it until it had hit the shelves of the library and the cover art caught my eye, leading me back to my copy.

Debut novelist Benjamin Wood sets the scene in picturesque Cambridge, moving between the spires and cobbled pathways of King’s College and the lush surrounding countryside that holds the family home of the Bellwethers. The book starts near the end of the story, an ending marked with a cold wind blowing through the grounds of the Bellwether Estate, flashing police lights, and bodies, though we don’t know whose.

And then, as if we had never been a part of that scene, we’re brought back to some previous time, when Oscar, a bookish but working class nurse’s assistant stumbles into the lives of the Bellwethers. Lulled into the college chapel by the melodies of an organ unlike any Oscar has ever heard, he meets Iris Bellwether, sister to the organist, Eden. The Bellwethers exist in a world that Oscar has only glimpsed — one of privilege and academia and, above all, music. The siblings and their small but tight-knit group of friends are similarly intrigued by Oscar’s life in all its job-holding, bill-paying, apartment-dwelling glory.

It is music that brings them together, and music that separates the six. Eden falls deeper and deeper into his own obsessions, believing that his organ gives him the ability to perform miracles. I don’t want to spoil the ending by revealing much more, but as Eden began his downward spiral, I kept thinking back to the opening scene of the book, wondering when and where those bodies would pop back up.

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Greatest Hits: Exile on Main Street: a Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield

*Note: All Wake County Public Libraries are closed today for the Independence Day holiday. In the mean time, enjoy this book review:

This week we’re featuring some of our “greatest hits” – the most popular Book-a-Day blog posts since we started this almost three years ago. Today’s is Exile on Main Street: a Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield, reviewed by Erik S.

It was the summer of 1981. There was a little boy named Erik who played little league for a team called the “Green Yankees.” As an outfielder, Erik was more prone to birdwatching than catching pop-flies. Needless to say, it wasn’t long before both Erik, and his parents, decided it was time for him to end his baseball pursuits.

Fast forward 20 years. It is the summer of 2001, and Erik is visiting his parents and going through some of the old childhood artifacts they have saved. He comes across an old Green Yankees roster with little mini bios for each of the team’s young players.  Most of the kids’ bios had details about their playing positions and their power plays throughout the season.  For Erik, it simply said, “Erik likes rock and roll.  His favorite band is Kiss.”  Point of the story, this kid was not born to play sports.  He was born to rock, (and read )  And with a book like Exile on Main Street : a Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones, you can certainly do both.  You will find yourselves intrigued and shocked with all of the carnal, cutthroat excess that occurs in this book; and more than likely, you’ll want to bust out of all of your Stones records and turn ‘em on up.

It was the summer of 1971 in the South of France; “a sunny place for shady people,” as described by the book’s author, Robert Greenfield.  The Rolling Stones had rented the lavish Villa Nellcote on the French Riviera to record their latest masterpiece, a double record called Exile on Main Street.  The Stones, surprisingly, were broke and had to leave England to avoid paying British income tax, (hence the “Exile” status for the record’s title).  What occurred during the time of this masterpiece’s making was a hodge-podge of sex, drugs, crime, and ultimately, untimely deaths for many of the party-goers during that very debauched summer.  Everyone wanted to party with the Rolling Stones.  They were kings; loved and worshiped by nearly everyone, impervious to the long arm of the law, and more or less untouchable.  If one could be remotely in the presence of these young British kings, it was truly a gift.  Therefore, the cast of characters at Nellcote that summer ranged from actors, rock stars, daughters and wives of royalty, and other grandiose hangers-on.  What this meant for the Rolling Stones was that they were granted the opportunity to live like emperors of ancient Rome.

The stories within this outstanding book range from orgiastic celebrating, to life-threatening drug habits, back-stabbing friends, affairs gone awry, close encounters with the law, and sadly, the inevitable deaths as a result of all the reckless abandon.  Some of the women, who at one time were high society debutantes who could simply snap their fingers and get anything they desired, ended up dead in back alley streets less than a year later; reduced to nothing more than anonymous, homeless junkies.  The book is a baffling one because it greatly romanticizes rock mythology, (which is hard not to do when discussing a group as decadent as the Rolling Stones), but as the title suggests, it does not shy away from the hell that surrounded this extravagant era.  Exile on Main Street is still considered one of the best rock and roll albums of all time.  Needless to say, you will never listen to it in the same manner ever again.  All of the love, death, and celebration that went into it’s creation are now a permanent testimony to one of the most mythical and dangerous times in the history of rock and roll.

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Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral

This book caught my eye immediately. The format is somewhere between a photographic coffee table book and a graphic novel; the story is told in words and pictures, but also through instant messages, you tube videos, and drawings. The result is a beautiful finished product to leaf through leisurely or to tackle as a quick read (I was able to plow through the entire book on my lunch break one day.)

The story starts with the main character, Glory, missing. She has escaped from a mental institution and hasn’t been heard from since. Rewind eighteen months, and the events leading up to her disappearance are revealed:

Glory is a teenaged piano prodigy about to embark on a worldwide tour. She’s known for her skill of mixing classical pieces with modern scores in a cohesive and innovative manner (think Bach alongside Madonna). Her father is demanding and her schedule grueling. Between lessons, practice, and keeping up with her schoolwork, Glory doesn’t have a lot of time to be a normal teenager. And then she meets Frank, and her whole world turns upside down.

Glory’s deteriorating mental state is shown through clipped articles, postcards to Frank from her tour, and other documents, placed together to form a sort of scrapbook. She becomes incapable of performing the pieces that she is known for (and expected to play) and instead only plays (you guessed it) Chopsticks.

For a peek at the type of imagery you’ll see throughout this book, check out the video preview of the book or take a peek inside the book online.

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The Bells by Richard Harvell

I first learned of the castrati while reading Anne Rice’s novel, Cry to Heaven, in the late ’90s.  The castrati were pre-pubescent boys that were purposely castrated so that they would retain their singing voice into adulthood.  The sheer horror of the practice caused that little historical nugget to stay in my mind, so that when I read a blurb about Richard Harvell’s debut novel, The Bells, it jumped out at me again.  I decided to try it and I wasn’t disappointed.

Presented as a letter to his adopted son, The Bells is the story of Moses Froben – a poor, uneducated boy born to a deaf-mute mother that lived in isolation, high in the belfry of a small-town church in the Swiss Alps and how he grows into one of the most celebrated opera singers of the time, known only as Lo Svissero.

Most of the villagers believe Moses is also deaf-mute, so after he witnesses a crime and they discover that he can in fact hear and speak, he flees for his life.  He receives help from two traveling monks, who hearing his situation, take pity on him and bring him to the Abbey of St. Gall.  Growing up in a belfry, Moses has developed a gift for music and his ears soon lead him to the boys’ choir at the Abbey.  The choirmaster, Ulrich, recognizes his gift and trains him.  Ulrich can’t bear for this gift to go away as Moses ages and has Moses castrated against his will.  At that time, the Swiss Confederation had outlawed castration and so Moses is forced, once again, to flee.  He chooses to follow a young woman of the upper class that he has fallen in love with to Vienna, where she will be married.

The rest of Moses’ journey and transformation into a father and into Lo Svissero is full of all the elements that make up a good opera – love, tragedy and passion.

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Just Kids by Patti Smith

It is difficult for me to think of an artist who illuminates pure positive affect in the way that Patti Smith does. For someone who always had a special place in his heart for Patti’s “Horses” record, I can safely say there are moments where her music and her words have taken my mind and my heart to places I would have never imagined. For me, the record has a similar effect to Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” The passion, the energy, the blood-racing anticipation between her vocal crescendos… It is absolutely on fire. However, I have found that “Horses” is a rather polarizing record. People who are into rock and roll either like it or hate it. I love it. My brain chemistry gets perfectly locked into Patti’s grooves, and I’m happy to know that I can revisit this amazing album throughout my life anytime I feel the need.

When Just Kids came out, I realized that it had been quite some time since I had last thought of Patti Smith. My reading habits have changed a lot throughout the years, and I’m generally not a fan of biographies. However, I knew I would enjoy this one. I was simply waiting for the right time to read it. One of the many things that fascinate me about Patti Smith is that she was simply a naive and innocent child full of so much wonderful curiosity, a perpetual outsider who had no misgivings over the fact that life would be an uphill battle. Unlike many artists whose early lives were subject to torment and desperation, Patti came from a humble and loving home. Patti was not abused by her family, (she actually spoke very tenderly of her parents and siblings), nor did she express any excessive disdain towards those she encountered during her early struggles, (not even towards her factory coworkers who dehumanized her; thus providing the impetus for her song, “Piss Factory,” nor the prying and judgmental eyes during her teenage pregnancy.) And even though she arrived in New York homeless and hungry and would generally fare no better until the latter end of the ’70s, Patti’s enthusiasm and diligence completely outshined her hardships.

Patti was in love with life. She was intoxicated with the freedom that came with being a young artist in a city of the world; finding inspiration and friendship during the unlikeliest moments, and holding onto these moments until they became the core of her being. One of the things I adore most about Patti Smith is her ability to live simultaneously inside her own head, completely losing herself within a sanctimonious inner world of books, dead poets, and philosophers, while also living very much in the moment. All of her encounters with ’60s rockers like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Grace Slick, along with her introductions to future celebrity artists, like Jim Carroll, Sam Shepard, and Tom Verlaine among many others, excited her, energized her, and gave her a great sense of fortune. She never took any of these encounters for granted and she continues to keep these people close to her heart to this day. Patti also never denied nor shied away from the influence of those who came before her, (particularly Jim Morrison and Arthur Rimbaud). I particularly enjoyed the passage in the book where she visited both of these young men’s graves in Paris.

The only thing I haven’t mentioned yet is Patti’s friendship to Robert Mapplethorpe. What a sweet, sweet thing. Their bond was beyond friendship, beyond physical love. These two were soul mates in the classic sense. Robert and Patti completed one another, challenged one another, and guided one another throughout every course in their lives. Even her descriptions of their simplest outings and everyday musings came across as life-changing journeys. She pulls this off without being overly dramatic or grandiose because the love these two had for one another was complete, endless, and beautiful, and it was perfectly captured in this book.

I was a little surprised that Patti didn’t delve more into the lives of her bandmates, her children, or her husband, the late, great Fred “Sonic” Smith. But then again, as she firmly stated, this was she and Robert’s story, and she promised him that one day she would write it and share it with the world. That’s precisely what she has done, and I’m very thankful for her doing so. This book was a glorious experience for me.

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A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I must say that I am sincerely enjoying the fact that there are at least some contemporary writers out there who truly know how to capture the voice of counterculture youth in American society, but without using the tired old hippy-types.  The whole ‘60s radical/idealist archetype has burnt itself out harder than David Crosby on a bender in Mexico.  Now is the time for the disaffected youth of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s to finally get their due.  All of those vastly ignored kids whom everyone used to go out of their way to avoid, the ones with the safety pinned clothes and dyed hair who hung out at punk clubs looking to bond with like-minded rejects and rock out to their favorite bands, are finally having their stories told.  These were the kids who were thought to have “no future,” as Johnny Rotten once screamed in his anti-anthem, “God Save the Queen.”  Even the classic Bay Area punk group, The Dead Kennedys, once wondered what would become of these kids by the time they reached 35, (that is if they reached 35).  Well, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book that not only provides that answer, it also gives an even deeper insight into the minds and hearts of these misfits.

This is a powerful book about life and choices, and time and memory. It was written in a post modern/jagged-time-lapse manner, which deconstructed all of the characters’ stories and allowed the reader to fill in all of the gaps in their histories, including all of their pain, loss, and redemption. The characters range from former punk rockers, all of whom have moved on to varying degrees of despair and success, kleptomaniacs, disgraced journalists, PR representatives for third world dictators, and innocent children who are forced into situations well beyond what is meant for their age.

There are genuine moments of heartache and joy, and even some “cute” experimental passages, like the 50-page PowerPoint presentation courtesy of one of the teenage characters, which she created to provide the history of she and her parents’ lives, (this also gives the reader some concrete details on the fates of many of the other characters). Overall, I commend Jennifer Egan for such a unique and beautifully written book, and I recommend it for anyone who’s looking for a new literary read. Easily one of the best I’ve read in a long time.

Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman

Do you remember where you were the first time you heard Shout at the Devil?  Do you still know all the lyrics to “Mr. Brownstone”?  Are you a member of the Kiss Army?  If you answered “yes” to any of the above– or wailed “YEAHHHHH!” in a high-pitched, operatic fashion– then turn down the Iron Maiden for a minute and check out Fargo Rock City.  It’s part memoir, part criticism, and all metal.

In FRC, Chuck Klosterman describes his adolescent years in North Dakota (not technically in  Fargo, but in the farm town of Wyndmere) and how his metal obsession began with a Motley Crue cassette.   In subsequent chapters, Klosterman highlights important dates from the metal scene of the eighties and nineties (“June 6th, 1985: Axl Rose fires guitarist Tracii Guns and joins forces with Slash”) and fearlessly argues for the cultural significance of that much maligned sub-genre known as “hair metal.”

If episodes of Behind the Music and That Metal Show aren’t satisfying your appetite for destruction, I’m offering you an elixir from the gods of rock.  The eighties may have passed, but as Tenacious D says, “You can’t kill the metal.”

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The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Motley Crue

This is the one book I really like that I won’t bother defending. I can’t defend it. It’s got no redeemable value, and that’s why it’s so good. It isn’t just that it’s tasteless and not written all that well, it’s that these guys lived such depraved lives that calling them animals does them more justice than they deserve. They’re not serial killers, but you are going to want to take a shower after each reading. So why would I even suggest this book? I don’t know. It won’t help make you a better citizen. It won’t help put you on the path to financial independence.  It won’t even help you communicate with your spouse. In fact, don’t read it. Don’t you have some flowers to press?

Your interest is piqued, isn’t it? The fact is many of us would have liked to have been one of the many flies on the wall during Motley Crue’s storied career.  I’m not even a huge fan, and I never listened to their music when they were active.  Still, I knew they had earned their reputation as “the bad boys of rock.” They were rude, loud and dirty. I first picked up the book because it happened to be on a table somewhere, and it had pictures. Who doesn’t like pictures? After reading a chapter or so, I was hooked. I don’t know whose copy it was, but I took it (sorry if it was yours). If they had been a little less disgusting or a little more restrained, I would simply have found them repugnant and not bothered. As it was, my mind was opened to the depths to which a group of young men with no taste or limits can sink. It was so bad that I was attracted to them. I was repulsed, too, but I also respected them. Don’t get me wrong, they did nothing worthy of respect, but there is something like a negative sublime surrounding this book. They lived like animals way beyond the point I would have had the courage to do even if I weren’t such a decent guy. I can’t give too many examples here, but there’s this story one of them tells when they were all living on Skid Row and they had no toilet paper but there was this old sock they all shared… OK, I’ll stop. I never said you should read it. I said you shouldn’t. But some of you, like me, will anyway.  It’s a raw memoir of drugs, loose women and wild living. These guys have truly been there, done that and lived to tell the tale. No small accomplishment.

The book is written by each band member. They all get their own section, and each is pretty fascinating. It’s not artful; it’s trash. Stinking, horrible trash.

The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Motley Crue